So, this afternoon I go over to City Hall to pick up some stuff -- a thick file of personal e-mails that will go off like an M18 Claymore when I get certain people close to Mayor Tom Leppert to step on them. Got them under my arm. Singing a happy tune. I walk out front to cross the plaza and go over to the library to pick up some other stuff. And what do I see but a big truck parked on the plaza with a billboard on one side that says, “Happy Birthday Mayor Leppert.”
They got food tents out there. Looks like they had a band. Couple dozen city employees standing around eating from their hands, looking miserable in the heat with their big city employee ID tags swinging from their necks like cowbells. I see Dallas Morning News reporters Dave Levinthal and Rudolph Boeusch interviewing some dork. It takes two News reporters to interview one dork. So what else is new?
But here’s the good part.
walk on down the path toward the corner along a row of low shaded concrete benches, and toward the end I see this bicycle cop delivering a big hyperactive speech to a bunch of loony-tunes homeless guys about why they’re not invited. Something about, “If this had been a general feeding, you would have been notified that it was a feeding, but this was not a feeding.”
I turn around and look back at all the cowbells back there stuffing hot dogs into their jowls like chipmunks, and I think, “Shit, it sure looks like a feeding to me.”
But we know what the officer meant. By “not a feeding” he meant, Not a feeding for you, you bunch of urinesque screwballs.
The screwballs were OK. They got it. They were all smiling and nodding yes to show they got it. Sort of. I imagined that, through the miasma of their under-dosed anti-psychotic pharmaceuticals and the malnutrition and the wine, they were staring at that cop and seeing a giant lizard on a motorcycle telling them not to eat the mayor.
I wanted to pass them a little note. “Ah, go ahead. Eat the mayor.” But I was busy. --Jim Schutze